Family Dreams
by ally.enchantress
Summary: A mother. A father. A husband, and a baby. A family. She, Beth, had a family. She, Olivia, had a family. Moment in time, Ace.


**Just the scene in the house, the beautiful E/O that Neal blessed us with. A one-shot, my style. That means going REALLY deep into everything that probably wasn't supposed to be there in the first place but that I found, implied, and otherwise contrived, and therefore used. Enjoy! Oh, and everything is Dick Wolf's. Except, of course, for my computer. Hence the 'my' before it.**

"We need a name for the birth certificate," Brooks said smoothly. Olivia's mind was instantly set ablaze with ideas. After spending an entire lifetime thinking of and discarding various baby names, she finally had to dig through the hoard and find one. Colin? No. Ryan? Perhaps before O'Halloran, but… Michael? Too common. He didn't look like a Michael. All this thought rushed to the forefront of her mind in a mere split second, and she had no idea what she would choose. Her mind was racing a million miles an hour. Not a second had gone by. Surely Elliot would be out of names, having had five kids already. It would probably be up to her, and she was reeling. Then, after a not even a second of time had gone by, she heard Elliot say,

"Oliver."

Oliver.

After _her._

The beautiful little boy's name was Oliver.

Olivia's baby boy was named Oliver. Elliot wished it to be so. It was going to take her a full hour and a bottle of wine to fully comprehend this; first that she had a baby, second that he was named after her, but then she heard Elliot add, "After her father."

A father. First a baby boy, now a father. The gifts just kept coming, didn't they? She wished she could break character long enough to tell her partner just how thankful she was, but she couldn't. "I can't wait to tell my mother," she said, a soft exclamation.

Only Elliot heard the surprise in her voice as she discovered that her alter ego had a mother. A living mother. A loving mother. A mother who didn't drink herself stupid thinking about her child's father, the man who raped her. His heart ached for her.

When asked for their baby's name, he knew he wanted to give her this chance, not only to be a mother, but to have a family of her own, one who loved her and cared about her and probably spent her entire childhood showing it. Her father would be dead. Olivia wouldn't know how to react to a living father, never having had one before, and he actually thought she might prefer a dead one, one she could mourn, one she had known, one she had clearly loved enough for her husband to name their baby after.

And then she'd thrown in a mother, too, a mother she couldn't wait to call and tell about her new child. This mother loved her very much, and the feeling was not only mutual but obvious.

Brooks interjected quickly, though his voice never lost its satin smoothness. "Oh, you will say nothing to anyone until baby is in your possession," he said with soft finality. "Otherwise, you will never see Oliver, eh." That was the reason he was so confident, both detectives knew. Of course no prospective parents would risk disobeying his orders as long as their baby was in his hands. The baby was the carrot in front of the donkey, his ace in the hole. When he held all the cards, there was nothing his buyers could do, and even Olivia and Elliot had to fold. They wanted that baby. Perhaps not for the same reasons as other "couples", but they wanted that baby.

Brooks turned to go, but Elliot stopped him. "When do we get our boy?" he demanded.

Face smooth, smirk in place, Brooks looked back at the man who tried to sound threatening to the man with the winning hand. "When I call you," he said, and both detectives could hear chuckling in his tone. And then he was gone. He had won the game, and all that was left was to collect the winning pot at a later date.

Olivia moved to the couch and sat down. Her elbows found her thighs, and she stared sightlessly at the spotless carpet. Elliot, who had gone to the window to make sure Fin was on Brooks' tail, fixed his gaze on her.

"You alright?" he asked carefully.

She looked up, eyes dazed. Her face was stuck in the expression she always wore when she was in the middle of a mind-blowing thought. Finally, her mouth curved upward into a soft, disbelieving smile.

Voice breathy, she whispered, "Oliver," as the smile grew slowly. He wasn't even sure she was aware of him.

Elliot held her eyes. _It's the best I could do,_ he said. _I wanted to give you a family._ He wondered if she would pick up on his actual implications; that _he_ wanted to give her a family. He wondered if she knew that, if Brooks wasn't a lowlife child trafficker and Elliot wasn't married, he would have adopted that child with her. He would have named it Oliver, after her, not her father. She could have called _his_ mother, if she wanted, just to say she had done so. Hell, he would have quit his job and taken up confection-making or however one was supposed to say that, if he had to. She probably wouldn't want him to do that, though.

A faint blush colored her cheeks. Of course she knew. Olivia always knew. He watched her smile, thinking it was the most beautiful thing in the world, knowing it was because of the family she had been blessed with, if only for a few precious minutes; the family he had given her. A family who loved her unconditionally. Irrevocably. Forever. A mother, a father, a husband, and a baby named Oliver. Everything she had ever wanted.

How hard it would be to admit that it wasn't real.

**Did you like it, by any chance? Pleasepleaseplease review!**


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